subscription

When you subscribe to a magazine or a service such as Netflix or Hulu Plus using your iTunes account, the subscription will keep auto-renewing until you turn it off. Turning off auto-renew, essentially canceling your subscription, only takes a few taps or clicks; you just have to know where to look.

There are two ways to manage your subscriptions in iTunes. You can use your iOS device, or you can use iTunes on your PC or Mac.

On your iOS device, launch the App Store and make sure you're viewing the Featured tab. Scroll to the bottom, tap on … Read more

One of the creators of Skype has announced a new addition to his digital music service Rdio.

Janus Friis says the Rdio Artist Program is designed to give musicians a better alternative to iTunes Match or Spotify, where some complain that commission rates based on the number of times a song is streamed leaves an artist with almost nothing.

With Rdio, uploaders earn $10 for every new subscriber they lure to the service. The platform pays artists to share both music and recommendations on social-networking sites including Facebook and Twitter -- promoting the company as well as themselves.

Microsoft helped develop a surveillance system for New York that pulls in information from video camera footage, 9-1-1 calls, radiation detectors and license plate readers, and analyzes the data in real-time to better fight crime and terrorism. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the program, known as the Domain Awareness System, and it will be available to law enforcement agencies around the world (New York earns 30 percent of sales revenue). It doesn't use face-recognition software, but even still, some critics are worried officers could abuse this technology and … Read more

Facebook has finally rolled out subscription options to all developers with apps on the world's largest social network.

Previously announced in June, the addition of subscriptions offers developers a chance at a recurring revenue stream. Facebook's Yegna Parasuram described subscriptions on the Facebook Developers blog as a new way to grow businesses.

Developers can go about this by including updated content and/or premium experiences for a monthly fee, which will be charged to the customer in his or her local currency. But developers will continue to receive payouts in U.S. dollars.

The Podcasts app on iOS is a great way to subscribe, listen to, and even watch your favorite podcasts while on the go. The tight integration with iTunes makes it simple to find and subscribe to new podcasts from your iOS device. What if you want to subscribe to a podcast that isn't in iTunes? As Macworld pointed out a while back, you can add non-iTunes podcasts to the app, using a not-so-obvious method.

Before you can add a podcast to the app, you'll need the direct link to the podcast. Sending it to yourself over iMessage or … Read more

I'm a magazine junkie. I grew up reading titles like Games, Omni, and Starlog, then moved on to every computer magazine I could get my hands on. (Show of hands: Who remembers Amiga World? PC/Computing?)

Eventually I started writing for them, and even went so far as to start my own magazine: Tap, a PalmPilot enthusiast rag that later became Handheld Computing. Good times.

Google's RSS Subscription Extension for Chrome automatically scans pages for RSS feeds and lets you subscribe to them with a single click on the RSS icon in the Omnibar. You must be signed in to Google to use it. It works with Chrome in Incognito mode, too, and supports multiple feeds per page. RSS Subscription Extension is freeware.

As with other Chrome extensions, you might miss RSS Subscription Extension's installation if you blink or look away, and (unlike some other Web browsers) you don't need to restart Chrome to activate it. We opened the Extensions Manager page … Read more

Facebook made a simple announcement today -- its virtual currency, "credits," is to become real currency, such as dollars, pounds, or rupees. Despite this being a seemingly straightforward notice, a lot can be read into this plan.

It points to the social network looking for additional ways to make money besides advertising and it shows the company's goal to grow as a payment platform embarking on a similar path to Apple with its iTunes store.

Time Inc. has had a change of heart with Apple and will now begin selling magazine subscriptions through iPad's Newsstand app. Previous apps for Time Inc. magazines, like Sports Illustrated, only allowed for one issue to be purchased at a time. It also gave print subscribers free access.

Last year, Time Inc. opposed how Apple handled subscriptions, such as taking a 30 percent cut of sales and not releasing data on subscribers. But since then, Apple has lets readers opt-in to … Read more

Time Inc., once a prominent opponent to selling magazine subscriptions for the iPad, has reached an agreement to offer subscriptions to all its magazines for Apple's tablet.

The two companies have reached a deal that allows iPad users to subscribe to 20 Time Inc. titles, including Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, and People magazines through Apple's App Store, Time Inc. CEO Laura Lang told The New York Times. Until now, Time Inc. was the big holdout to Apple's digital subscription plan, which sells iPad versions of magazine content.

Until now, Time Inc. had sold only single-issue app versions … Read more